Epicurus Research Paper

Have you ever felt like, enough is not enough? When is enough, enough? Different people of different ages, race, cultures and status in life have different strategies on how to handle desires. Just like the old saying goes; “To each, his own.”

Many times whenever you set a standard and that standard had been met, you still aim for a better one to somehow surpass the previous one. In some cases this is healthy but when you start to get obsessed by this, you will find yourself caught in your own bait. I know we are human and we are not perfect that is why we strive for more, we want more, and will never be contented with what we have especially when we are in the middle of a competition.

The philosophy of Epicurus (341–270 B.C.E.) was a complete and interdependent system, involving a view of the goal of human life (happiness, resulting from absence of physical pain and mental disturbance), an empiricist theory of knowledge (sensations, including the perception of pleasure and pain, are infallible criteria), a description of nature based on atomistic materialism, and a naturalistic account of evolution, from the formation of the world to the emergence of human societies. Epicurus believed that, on the basis of a radical materialism which dispensed with transcendent entities such as the Platonic Ideas or Forms, he could disprove the possibility of the soul's survival after death, and hence the prospect of punishment in the afterlife. He regarded the unacknowledged fear of death and punishment as the primary cause of anxiety among human beings, and anxiety in turn as the source of extreme and irrational desires. The elimination of the fears and corresponding desires would leave people free to pursue the pleasures, both physical and men...

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...thing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content with that.”

“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you have, you will never, ever have enough.” - Oprah Winfrey

“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” - Laozi

“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” - Socrates

“You say, 'If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.' You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.”

- Charles H. Spurgeon

“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.” - John Stuart Mill